INTERACTIONAL JUSTICE AND DEVIANT WORKPLACE BEHAVIOR: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF PERCEIVED SUPERVISOR SUPPORT IN HOTEL INDUSTRY OF KP-PAKISTAN

In the field of organizational behaviour, interactional justice and perceived supervisor support have a critical role in directing employees’ behaviour in either positive or negative direction. Keeping this in mind, this paper looks at the effect of interactional injustice on employees’ deviant behaviour with perceived supervisor support as a mediator. To link the study variables, equity and social exchange theories were used. The extensive literature on destructive deviance has been reviewed. To empirically test the relationship, a two-phase sampling technique (first clustering and then purposive) was applied through which 160 responses from the Hotel and Tourism industry of KP province were collected. A single structured adapted questionnaire was employed. The findings of the study reveal the presence of a negative relationship between interactional justice and deviant workplace behaviour. Further, the results demonstrated that perceived supervisor support mediates this relationship. All the results of the study are statistically significant. The study has theoretical as well as practical implications. Theoretically, the results of the study would help the organizational behaviour scholars to understand the issue in a different organizational environment. Practically, the findings will assist managers to understand the critical role of the supervisor which is instrumental in enhancing the morale of employees at the workplace. This will help them understand how supervisor support can affect the frequency and intensity of deviant workplace behaviour. The study has some limitations like sampling, subjective opinion of the participants, and limited numbers of the variables. In future, this research can be replicated in other sectors like education, health, banking, and other industries.


INTRODUCTION
When it is said 'employees are asset of an organization', it is neither their number nor their qualification. It is their behaviour that counts! They are asset only when their behaviour synchronizes with the expectations of the organization otherwise, they are liability. In the current complex, competitive and fluid market (Arain, Bhatti, Hameed, & Fang, 2019;Haarhaus & Liening, 2020), organizations need to be both efficient and effective in what they do. And to do this, organizations must look into the factors that affect the behaviour of their employees as it has direct correlation to organizations' success (Ali et al. 2021;Shrestha & Subedi, 2020). This understanding of human behaviour will enable them to build and maintain a competent and cooperative workforce. Notwithstanding, employees have been found with dissimilar behaviour-constructive and destructive (deviant) behavioral inclination. The former is beneficial and desired for both the employee and the organization while the latter is detrimental and undesirable for both (Vadera, Pratt, & Mishra, 2013). A question arises: why employees get engaged in the latter when it is detrimental and undesirable?
The extant literature (e.g., Appelbaum, Iaconi, & Matousek, 2007;Dar, Khan, & Rauf, 2020;Haldorai, Kim, Chang, & Li, 2020) is replete with examples of employees being found involved in diverse manifestations of deviant workplace behaviour like withholding efforts, taking leave without permission and falsifying their expenditure statements. Researchers are consistently in search of logical reasons as to why employees tend to deviate negatively from organizational norms. In last two decades these questions have engaged the attention of the organizational researchers. Some scholars (e.g., Andreoli & Lefkowitz, 2009;Appelbaum, et al., 2007;Palmer, Komarraju, Carter, & Karau, 2017) argued that individual differences are responsible for such harmful behaviors. Many others (e.g., Andreoli & Lefkowitz, 2009;Dar & Rahman, 2020;Henle, 2005;Yıldız, Alpkan, & Sezen, 2015) investigated contextual factors that contribute in expression of them. But there exists limited research on the role of dyad (supervisor-sub-ordinates) relationship in occurrence of negative deviant behaviors. Therefore, this study takes interactional (in)justice being antecedent of harmful behavior with mediation of perceived supervisor support. The study used the social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity to explain relationships among study variables.
Organizational behavior scholars have called this harmful behavior with different names. For example for Spector and Fox (2005) it is counterproductive work behavior; for Shapiro, Duffy, Kim, Lean, and O'Leary-Kelly antisocial behavior (2008) it is antisocial; for Hershcovis (2011) it is workplace aggression; and for Robinson and Bennett (1995) it is deviant workplace

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Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2022 [151] behavior. Despite its theoretical distinction the common theme among them is their discretion and harmful nature to both individual or organization (Cropanzano, Anthony, Daniels, & Hall, 2017). The scope of this study is limited to deviant workplace behavior a bi-dimensional (organizational deviance and interpersonal deviance) construct. The deviant workplace behavior is "discretionary behavior where individuals intentionally violate significant organizational norms and by doing so threatened the wellbeing of other members and organization or both" (Robinson & Bennett, 1995).
Organizational justice is a good predictor of the many shapes of individual behavior at work (Rupp & Cropanzano, 2002). All practices within workplace, whether it is organization policies, reward allocation or supervisor treatment, is marked with (in)justice (Colquitt, 2001).
Therefore, research has revealed many outcomes of justice like organizational citizenship behavior (Rupp & Cropanzano, 2002), job satisfaction (Nadiri & Tanova, 2010;Rupp & Cropanzano, 2002), organizational commitment (Wang, Liao, Xia, & Chang, 2010) and deviant workplace behavior (Demir, 2011;Fox, Spector, & Miles, 2001;Hashish, 2020). This article is aimed at investigating deviant workplace behavior as a response to injustice at workplace. Although researchers have been looking at organizational justice from its three commonly known dimensions, the scope of this article is only limited to one dimension i.e.
interactional justice. The relationship of interactional justice with deviant behavior is not linear but there are some variables that can intervene and may better explain their relationship (Yang, Bauer, Johnson, Groer, & Salomon, 2014). To have a better understanding of the nature and mechanism of their relationship some moderating and mediating variables needs to be incorporated. Therefore, this research would treat perceived supervisor support and posit that it is the interactional justice that is instrumental in affecting deviant behavior. Furthermore, the interest of this research is the dyad relationship between supervisors and subordinates which is again posited to be contributory in the boosting or mitigating the deviant workplace behavior.
To explain and build this theoretical integration the authors would be considering the social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity.
The study will be carried among the employees of hotel and hospitality industry of KP- justice and perceived supervisor support are like backbone in the dyad relationship of supervisor and subordinate. And the interplay of these variables is more frequent in hospitality industry as compared to other industries because of the daily and mostly on hourly basis interactions of subordinates with their supervisor. It means the exchange of information and interpersonal treatment in this industry is too frequent comparatively. Therefore, the findings of this study would be more objective and practical and will be more valuable for the management of the said industry.

Interactional Justice and Deviant Behavior
There are many studies that have looked into the interplay of organizational justice and workplace deviance (Rupp & Cropanzano, 2002). The extant literature has explained the relationship with all its three dimensions. Each dimension has been studied separately in relationship with deviant workplace behavior. However, the scope of this research is only limited to interactional justice. In the previous literature each dimension has been considered and treated in organizational perspective. But this research has investigated the interactional justice from the supervisor's perspective. The social exchange theory and norm of negative reciprocity (Blau, 1968;Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005) are employed to look into the relationship among study variables. These theories expound that a subordinate responds back to the supervisor attitudes and behaviors qualitatively and quantitatively (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005). In case of perception of unfairness in this social exchange process, employees would respond negatively (Farid, Xiongying, Raza, Gul, & Hanif, 2021;Parzefall & Salin, 2010). It means if employees perceive interactional fairness in the dyad relationship, their response will be positive and so would be involved in some positive acts. On the contrary, if they perceive unfairness in this exchange relationship they would be involved in some negative deviant acts (Hoobler & Hu, 2013). The Equity theory also asserts that when employee perceive unfairness in organizational setting he/she tends to restore this unfairness by involving in some negative acts (Hoobler & Hu, 2013;Khattak, Zolin, & Muhammad, 2020;Shoaib & Baruch, 2017).
Some empirical studies have shown a negative link between interactional justice and deviant behavior (Hoobler & Hu, 2013;Ni, Liu, & Zheng, 2021;Shoaib & Baruch, 2017). For example, Ahmad (2018) contends that the interactional justice and workplace bullying are negatively linked, a type of negative deviant acts. The Skarlicki and Folger (1997) have also demonstrated that high interactional injustice lead to retaliation. Similarly, Le Roy, Bastounis,

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[153] and Poussard (2012) have found that when employees perceive interactional injustice, they tend to be angry and this anger further coverts to deviant acts like verbal aggression, sabotage, and theft. They further elaborate that those who feel that they have no access to necessary information become involved in aversive behavior like absenteeism and taking long breaks.
Keeping the explanation provided in the extant literature in mind, this study puts the following hypothesis for validation in the current population:

H1:
The interactional justice is negatively associated with deviant behavior.

Perceived Supervisor Support and Deviant Behavior
Supervisors have been playing a critical role in shaping subordinates' behavior and enhancing their performance in organization setting (De Carlo, Dal Corso, Carluccio, Colledani, & Falco, 2020;Shanock & Eisenberger, 2006). The literature indicates that owing to supportive supervision subordinates feel obliged to behave positively for organization's welfare (Foa & Foa, 1980;Mishra, Bhatnagar, Gupta, & Wadsworth, 2019). On the contrary, the unsupportive supervision in exchange relationship leads to subordinate expression of harmful behavior towards supervisor and organization as a whole (Whelpley & McDaniel, 2016). Some empirical studies in the subject field are evidences of the direct relationship or through mediation mechanism that purport the negative relationship between perceived supervisor support and deviant acts. For example, by adopting a mediation mechanism Sguera, Bagozzi, Huy, Boss, and Boss (2017) argued that perception of supervisor support first convert to supervisor directed self-esteem which further channels the behavior of the subordinate. Their findings demonstrated a negative link between perceived supervisor support and deviant behavior. Additionally, Khan, Kanwal, and Shoaib (2015) have investigated the existence of a negative relationship between perceived supervisor support and workplace deviance. Having said that one can conclude that employees who perceive low level of supervisory support are more likely involved in deviant workplace behavior which, in turn, negatively affects the organization, other employees and customers (Liao, Joshi, & Chuang, 2004). Thus, this study proposed that: H2: There is a negative relationship between perceived supervisor support and deviant behavior.

Perceived Supervisor Support as a Mediator
In the relationship of managerial justice and deviant behavior the immediate supervisor plays an important role (Ahmad, 2018;Li, Liao, Shao, & Huang, 2021). A supportive supervision is DOI: 10.52633/jemi.v4i1.121 [154] believed to lessen the perception of interactional injustice which further affects the subsequent behavior of subordinate (Ahmad, 2018). According to social exchange theory (Blau, 1968), employees are in continuous transaction with their supervisor and organization as a whole. In this transactional exchange relationship, the type of reciprocation of employee depend on the nature of actions of the supervisor and organization. This notion provides theoretical foundation for the relationship of all three study variables. It means when employees perceive injustice in interaction with supervisor they feel that their supervision is not treating them with respect and dignity and thus are more likely involved in deviant workplace behavior (Shanock & Eisenberger, 2006;Song, Skarlicki, Shao, & Park, 2020). Therefore, this study proposed:

Sampling and Sampling Procedure
Data for the study was collected through a survey questionnaire. For each of the respondents, the researcher translated all the questions into Urdu (native) language and then retranslated into English in order to ensure its validity. This task was performed with the help of two Urdu language specialists and the translated questionnaire was also checked by three professors of human resource management for content validity. Before conducting the original survey, a

Measures
The interactional justice further has two dimensions the interpersonal justice and informational justice. The interpersonal justice was assessed through 4 items scale adopted from Colquitt (2001) having (Cronbach's α = 0.88) and an example of items is "Overall, our supervisor treat us with respect". The informational justice was measured through 5 items scale adopted from Colquitt (2001) having (Cronbach's α = 0.91) and an example of items is "In my department, information is provided in detail". For all the three scale five-point Likert having responses range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) was employed. The deviant workplace behaviour was measured with 12 items scales adopted from as a subscale of the basic scale of Robinson and Bennett (1995). It was measured with a seven-point Likert scale range from 1 (daily) to 7 (never). The 6 item scale employed for measuring perceived supervisor support was adopted from Eisenberger, Stinglhamber, Vandenberghe, Sucharski, and Rhoades (2002) with a little bit customization like the phrase 'work organization' was replaced with one word 'supervisor' as did by Shanock and Eisenberger (2006). Here, again the 5-point Likert was employed. For data analysis SPSS version 20 and Amos 18 were employed.

Control Variables
Demographic factors (education, tenure, and age) have been treated as controlled variables.
The logic behind this treatment was that researchers (e.g., Appelbaum, Deguire, & Lay, 2005) in their empirical studies have found that senior employees tend to be less deviant as compared to the relatively new ones. Moreover, the more educated a person the less it will tend to be involved in deviant acts (Appelbaum, et al., 2005). Similarly, age also matters. Researchers (i.e., Greenberg & Barling, 1996) have found that the young ones are more prone to commit deviant act as compared to the aged ones. Gender was not considered here because all respondents were male and due to cultural constraints women are not employed in hotel industry of KP-Pakistan.

Descriptive Statistics, Reliabilities, and Correlations
Descriptive statistics (i.e., means, standard deviations, correlations between the study variables and reliabilities of the respective scales are presented in table 1. The values of reliability coefficients of each scale fall within the acceptable range. These are 0.77, 0.88 and 0.85 for interactional justice, deviant behavior, and perceived supervisor support respectively. The correlation value of (r = -0.54**) reflects a strong association between interactional justice and deviant behavior. The interactional justice was also found highly correlated with perceived supervisor support with the value of (r = 0.45**). Deviant behavior and perceived supervisor support were also found to be highly correlated (r = -0.73).

Construct Validity of the Model
To check psychometric properties of the study variables, the researchers carried out a series of confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs). It started with a three-factor model in which interactional justice, perceived supervisor support and deviant workplace behaviour were included. In the two-factor model interactional justice and perceived supervisor support were combined into one factor. And lastly, a single-factor model was analyzed wherein all the three variables were included. To evaluate the fitness of the all the three models, fit indices like Chi square value (χ 2 ), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), comparative fit index (CFI), and incremental fit index (IFI) were employed. The acceptable ranges for these indices are, the RMSEA should be less than 0.08 and CFI and IFI should be more than 0.90 (Hu & Bentler, 1999). The results indicated that the three factor model χ 2 = 183.0, p < 0.00, RMSEA = 0.05, CFI = 0.96, IFI = 0.96, revealed a better fit to the data than the other models including the twofactor model χ 2 (107) = 107.0, p\.000, RMSEA = 0.09, CFI = 0.87, IFI = 0.87), and the one factor model χ 2 =750.0, p 0.000; RMSEA = 0.21, CFI = 0.11, IFI = 0.12, Thus the results of three-factor model (i.e., Interactional justice, perceived supervisor support and deviant workplace behavior) best fit the data χ 2 =182.981,p < 0.00, CFI = 0.96, IFI= 0.96, RMSEA = 0.05) than the other two models which consist of fewer factors. This means that these factors are failed to be discriminant from each other in these other two models. Furthermore, the differences in the values of chi square revealed that the three-factor model is a better fit than the alternative models (table 2). These results revealed that the criteria for discriminant validity were fulfilled. In addition the factor loading of each construct has shown that the construct validity of all constructs have acceptable level (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988). The results of CFA indicated that the psychometric properties of the model are statistically adequate. On the basis of these results further analysis of the model is recommended.

Hypothesis Testing
To test the hypotheses of the model, SEM was employed. Hypothesis 1 asserted that interactional justice and deviant workplace behavior has a negative association. The results of SEM as shown in Table 3 indicate that interactional justice has a direct effect (β = -.54; t (160) = -7.979; p = 0.00) on deviant workplace behavior. After controlling for age, tenure and education this direct effect between interactional justice and deviant workplace behavior is also statistically significant (F (160) = 63.67; R² = 0.29, p = .000). Thus, collectively these results supported hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 2 proposed that perceived supervisor support and deviant workplace behavior has a negative relationship. The results of SEM as presented in Table 3 revealed that there is a direct effect of perceived supervisor support (β = -.616; t (160) = -13.518; p = .000) on deviant workplace behavior. justice has a positive significant relationship with perceived supervisor support (β = .45; t (160) = 6.269; p = .000). Hence, hypothesis 2 was also supported.
Moreover, hypothesis 3 proposed that interactional justice has a negative relationship with deviant workplace behavior through the mediation of perceived supervisor support such that interactional justice has positive relationship with perceived supervisor support and perceived supervisor support has negative relationship with deviant workplace behavior. The relationship was operationalized through indirect effects. The

DISCUSSION
The main purpose of this study was to look into the effects of interactional justice and deviant workplace behavior. In addition to that, perceived supervisor support was introduced as a mediator in the subject relationship. The empirical results revealed the existence of a negative relationship between interactional justice and deviant workplace behavior. This means that the proposed hypotheses got validated in the current population. These results are in line with the findings of a number of researchers (Dar & Rahman, 2019;Hoobler & Hu, 2013;Shoaib & Baruch, 2017;Skarlicki & Folger, 1997). The results strengthen the notion that in case of interactional injustice employees would tend to involve in deviant acts (Blau, 1968).
Supervisor has a very critical role in managing the behaviour of the employees thereby affecting their individual as well as collective performance (Ding & Yu, 2020;Shanock & Eisenberger, 2006). The empirical findings of this study lent support to the existence of negative effects of perceived supervisor support on employee's deviant workplace behavior.
These findings are again in line with the findings of the past researches (Chullen, Dunford, Angermeier, Boss, & Boss, 2010;Whelpley & McDaniel, 2016). The empirical findings of the current as well as the past studies are sufficient justification for conclusion that positive supervisor support is vital for maintaining workable relationship in organizations.
The study also posited that the relationship between interactional justice and deviant workplace behavior mediated by perceived supervisor support. The results supported this hypothesis as well. The current findings are in line with the findings of a number of past researchers (Ahmad, 2018). It also validates the relevance of the social exchange theory (Blau, 1968) in such situations. In other words, employees put themselves in transactional exchange relationship in which employees reciprocate how they are treated by the supervisor as a boss and the organization as whole. In short, when employees perceive fairness in supervisor-subordinate relationship they tend to be less likely involved in deviant acts and vice versa. It means when employees perceive that their supervisor is being just to them in interpersonal treatment and also in provision of necessary information, they think their supervisor is caring and supportive. mitigation of deviant workplace behavior by treating their subordinates fairly. It means that when employees perceive that their organizational context and supervisor exhibit concern for justice based policies and justice relevant issues and in especially in situation of supervisorsubordinate relationship, they reciprocate positively. Therefore, managers need to be more careful in treating their employees and provision of necessary information on time will help in building and developing a positive perception in employees' mind. This positive perception will be a sufficient proof of supervisor/ manager to be a caring and supportive one which may affect employees' behavioral intentions. Thus, employees having positive behavioral intentions will be less likely involved in harmful deviant acts.
Second, the findings of the study explored the importance of supervisor-subordinate relationship. It means the managers will not only be acting like an administrator, he/she must know the psychology of their employees as well. They need to be well educated, aware of and trained in justice issues. Furthermore, managers must also have strong interpersonal skills. In such circumstances employees perceive their supervisor and overall organizational context supportive and thus would be less likely involved in deviant acts.
Third, the findings of the study signal the managers about their behavioral consequences. It means if a supervisor treat some or all of their subordinates with injustice, subordinate will tend to restore this injustice by reciprocating harmful behavior. And this is what equity theory (Blau, 1968) and norm of reciprocity expound. It has to be noted that these harmful acts will not only be supervisor directed but it might also be organization directed may also be directed against property and the production process. In short, the findings of the study suggest that supervisor-subordinate relationship is an important antecedent of deviant workplace behavior.
And more importantly the findings revealed that supervisor-subordinate relationship might be used as a tool for mitigation of such harmful behaviors in organization context.
Fourth, in the hotel industry, due to frequent interactions between supervisor and subordinate, their relationship has far more consequences. The quality of this relationship will automatically influence the quality of services of the hotel and its overall performance. If a supervisor treats the subordinates with respect and dignity their reciprocation will be positive. On the other hand, if they are treated unfairly, they will harm and damage the hotel hard and soft aspects intentionally. They will also ignore the instructions of supervisor intentionally. These circumstances will obviously affect the performance of the hotel as a whole.

CONCLUSION
Organizational justice has shown to have positive as well negative effects on attitudes and behaviors of employees. This study provides insights in the relationship of interactional justice and workplace deviant behaviour within organization. Further, it examines the mediating role of perceived supervisor between the above relationships. The empirical results revealed that perceived supervisor support has the potential to mediate this relationship such that the lack of this support enhances the occurrence of deviant behavior at workplace. This is because when employees are treated unjustly, they would try to restore the inequity and consequently exhibit deviant acts. The current understanding is not final in terms of interactional justice and deviant workplace behaviors. However, it provides substantial implications for theory and practice.
This link can be further explored by employing different underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions.